I had no intention of making or joining a new startup (after a successful exit that was a good financial decision but turned out to be terrible professional one), when a few former co-founders of SequenceIQ and friends that I’d been working with at Fathom Technology/Epam Systems approached me after I arrived home from an extended surfing trip. A handful of them had moved on to a project for a banking giant that invovled microservice-based Java applications scheduled with Nomad. They had all seen the Pipeline project I started. After a few meetings in which their intention was to convince me to join them, the discussion veered off in a direction none of us could have predicted. Now we’re all working on Banzai Cloud’s next generation Platform as a Service, Pipeline.
Although I’ve know most of these guys for ages, I’d still like to lay out some key values that will guide how we work together, build a company, and reach our mutual goals. I’ll be holding myself personally accountable, if we divert from and give up on these core values meant to guide us toward our mission: Bringing cloud native to the enterprise.
Be Transparent
We’re all working hard towards a common goal, so everyone deserves to know what’s going on inside the company. That includes everything from financial reports, technology decisions, company objectives, capital raised, performance reviews to decision making. You name it. Obliviously this will involve a high degree of trust and autonomy, and a company culture in which employees aren’t penalized for trying new things, starting projects or getting involved in things that are not strictly in line with their job specifications. We respect and trust our employees the same way we trust our open source communities and customers. Project-related decisions and the Pipeline PaaS roadmap will always be available for the end user, and shared on GitHub. Although we already have commercial obligations, we will try to treat and deal with the issues submitted by our community as if they were concerns raised by a customer. Every single user of the Pipeline PaaS is our customer, regardless of whether they’re on a commercial plan or not.
Aim high without fear
At Banzai Cloud our mission statement is to bring the cloud native paradigm to the entire industry. We aim to radically simplify the transition toward microservices in the cloud and on Kubernetes, by making sure that the Pipeline PaaS does all the heavy lifting. We believe that open source code encourages innovation and progress, and we’re advocates of both. First and foremost, we will set and live up to our own high standards, because we believe that if we reach them we will simultaneously meet the high standards and expectations of our investors and customers.
The value of the individual in 2D
We truly believe in the value and contributions of you, the individual. We’re a software company with few tangible assets except software, which is open sourced and will always stay that way. The only real value and assets we posess are your contributions, knowledge and commitment. We revere these and will try to compensate you for them with meaningful equity and competitive pay, flexible hours and working environment, and an unlimited paid holiday policy. We all work hard and deserve as much rest as we need to recharge in order to tackle the next problem. Balanced individuals produce exceptional results, and whether that is achieved through time with friends and family, a generous vacation policy or a healthy lifestyle, taking the time to establish balance makes your work more productive. We also believe that hierarchy does not help innovation and sets unnecessary organizational barriers. We do have roles and titles, though, mostly because the world around us has roles and titles. However, fancy titles provide little but a shared understanding of what we should expect from each other. We strongly believe that any one of our employees can take on a completely different role and encourage the change necessary to break these temporary structures whenever they better support our goals. This is why hiring is a collaborative effort, and the single most important task we all need to be involved in. Culture fit, attitude and the ability to change are extremely important in Flatland.
Great cultures do not guarantee successful companies, but hard work is more fun and a lot less painful when a company is built on a foundation of transparency, trust, respect, work-life balance, and of course friendship.
Welcome to Banzai Cloud!
